A senior technical fellow from the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Centre (AMRC) was invited to speak at the International Machine Tool Engineers’ Conference (IMEC) in Tokyo.

Being just one of four international presenters at IMEC 2022, Dr Erdem Ozturk, delivered a speech on the ‘Increasing Roles of Robots in Machining’, and the challenges that need to be addressed to use robots in machining of high accuracy parts along with new, emerging application areas. His presentation formed part of IMEC’s third technical session that covered ‘Control/mechatronics technology to support precision’.

Having presented a journal paper titled ‘Robotic assisted milling for increased productivity’ in Tokyo in 2018, Dr Ozturk said was very glad to have been invited to speak at the 19th IMEC and looked forward to it. 

Talking about the conference, he said, “The speeches covered topics such as carbon neutrality, industry 5.0, machine tool error compensation and robotics. After my speech, I was glad to have many questions which showed the interest of the machine tool community in Japan on robots.”

IMEC 2022 was a two-day event which took place at Tokyo Big Sight earlier this month and was organised within the Japan International Machine Tool Fair (JIMTOF), the second biggest machine tool fair in the world. This year’s theme was ‘Challenge for the new era - Monozukuri revolutionised by digital technology’.

Dr Ozturk added that he was honoured to meet with the chairman of FANUC company, Dr Inaba, who is also the chairman of Japan Machine Tool Builders' Association (JMTBA), among other respected professionals in the field. This includes other presenters from research institutes, automotive giants such as Toyota and Nissan Motor Company and large machine tool builders such as Yamazaki Mazak, Makino, Okuma and DMG Mori.